The 42nd Annie Award nominations, presented by the International Animated Film Society, ASIFA-Hollywood, cover film, TV production, commercials, short subjects, video games, student films and honorary and achievement awards. The newest category -- character animation in a video game -- brings the total awards to 36. Here's a complete list of winners and nominees:

The Riverwood Poetry Series will launch a four-day Connecticut Poetry Festival, featuring six events at five places in Hartford, from Thursday, Nov. 13 to Nov. 16. It's all free, but donations will be accepted, and a $10 donation is suggested for the...

The Ray Bradbury Storytelling Festival, performed in the Genesee Theatre in Waukegan, is named for one of that town's most famous sons. It takes place on the late author's favorite holiday, Halloween. Naturally, participating storytellers plan to...

An onslaught of new movies couldn't make "Gone Girl" disappear from the top of the box-office charts.
The David Fincher-directed thriller was the highest-grossing film in the U.S. for the second weekend in a row, beating out fantasy adventure "Dracula...

Zombies, ghosts and psycho killers don't just haunt horror movies. This Halloween season, they're all over Chicago stages providing scares, laughs and a few racy thrills. If you dare, you can get up close with the creatures of the night at these 14 shows....

Science fiction writer Richard Matheson passed away Sunday at age 87. Novelist and writer for film and television, Matheson had a long and storied career that saw him influence multiple generations of writers working in a broad cross-section of genre storytelling. Author Stephen King famously declared Matheson his greatest influence as a writer
A broad range of films has been adapted from his works. His novel "I Am Legend" alone provided the basis for the 2007 Will Smith movie of the same name but...

Most of the characters he portrayed died screaming.
His demeanor and manner of speaking gave one the distinct impression that he was an upper-crust Englishman — the accent was formal and his voice richly, even creepily, sonorous.
In actuality, his upbringing was far more plebeian. He was raised in St. Louis and, though he sounded Shakespearean, was more Huck Finn than Richard III.
No child of poverty, his grandfather secured the family's fortune by inventing Dr. Price's Baking Powder. His...

"Play normal music!"
The woman yelling this at Neil Young stood three rows away from him at the Rosemont Theater in 2004. Between each song, as he spoke to the crowd about the next chapter in "Greendale," the theatrical rock play he was presenting (complete with actors and rudimentary set pieces), the woman behind me loudly made her demand. For more than an hour. He, and everyone else, should understand she wanted none of this.
--------------------
This piece first ran in Printers Row Journal,...

Edgar Allan Poe was a pretty open-minded guy. "I do not believe that any thought, properly so called," he once said, "is out of the reach of language."
So this Baltimore favorite son presumably would have been cool with the "Homo Poe Show," which started as a single thought — Is there a way to see Poe through a gay lens? — and resulted in enough provocative language to launch an evening-length collection of four short theater works.
It's the brainchild of Steven J. Satta, founding member...

* (out of four)
The tagline for "The Bag Man" is "The cat's in the bag." A cat is not actually in the bag. And it takes almost the entire movie to find out what's in the bag, which -- spoiler alert! -- you can pretty much guess if you remember the answer to Brad Pitt asking, "What's in the box?"
"Inspired by" Marie-Louise von Franz's story "The Cat" and re-written from a script called "Motel" by James Russo ... wait, let's pause a second. Russo also wrote a movie called "The Box." This guy clearly likes...

Ballet Theatre of Maryland is starting its 2014 season in history-making fashion, offering its first full-length production of "Swan Lake" in three performances over the Feb. 21-23 weekend at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts.
Artistic director Dianna Cuatto is relishing the challenge after twice offering a shortened version. She calls "Swan Lake" "perhaps Tchaikovsky's finest ballet score" and "the last great romantic ballet from the golden era."
The masterwork is considered more symphonic than...